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Roy Curtiss

Grand Challenges in Global Health Initiative selects 43 groundbreaking research projects for more than $436 million in funding

ASU’s Curtiss awarded $14.8M to Develop New Pneumonia Vaccine for Newborns

The Grand Challenges in Global Health initiative, a major effort to achieve scientific breakthroughs against diseases that kill millions of people each year in the world’s poorest countries, is offering 43 grants totaling $436.6 million for a broad range of innovative research projects involving scientists in 33 countries. The ultimate goal of the initiative is to create “deliverable technologies” – health tools that are not only effective, but also inexpensive to produce, easy to distribute, and simple to use in developing countries.

The Grand Challenges in Global Health initiative is supported by a $450 million commitment from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, as well as two new funding commitments: $27.1 million from the Wellcome Trust, and $4.5 million from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). The initiative is managed by global health experts at the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health (FNIH), the Gates Foundation, the Wellcome Trust, and CIHR.

Among the recipients is ASU’s Roy Curtiss, co-director of the Center for Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology in the Biodesign Institute at ASU and a professor in the School of Life Sciences. Curtiss will lead an international group of researchers in the U.S., Australia, and South Korea in order to improve a vaccine against bacterial pneumonia so it requires only a single dose. The current vaccine requires four injections given at specific intervals.

Meeting the need for a new pneumonia vaccine

Globally, about 3 million deaths annually are due to Streptococcus pneumoniae, the bacteria which causes pneumonia and meningitis. Poor countries account for more than 95 percent of these deaths, yet the current vaccines are poorly-suited to developing nations.

Undeveloped nations often have populations that are spread over large geographic areas with few health clinics, poor modes of transportation, and a shortage of trained health care workers. The current anti-pneumonia vaccine approved for use in infants and toddlers requires four doses of an injected vaccine given at specific intervals. A single dose vaccine – and one that is given orally so more people could be trained to effectively administer it – eliminates many of the current barriers to vaccination in undeveloped nations.

The types of anti-pneumonia vaccines currently available require expensive production methods – about $40 per dose. A live bacterial vaccine such as the one proposed would enable cost-effective production, resulting in a vaccine costing about $1 per dose.

The project will formulate the vaccine with a safe, low-cost additive derived from weakened Salmonella bacteria, which early studies suggest can enhance a vaccine’s ability to stimulate a potent immune response. Curtiss’ team will also work to design the vaccine so that it can be given orally; oral delivery is less dependent on sterile conditions than injections and requires less training to administer. If effective, this technology has the potential to be used for a range of existing and new vaccines.

The Grand Challenges initiative was launched by the Gates Foundation in 2003, in partnership with the National Institutes of Health, with a $200 million grant to the FNIH to help apply innovation in science and technology to the greatest health problems of the developing world. Of the billions spent each year on research into life-saving medicines, only a small fraction is focused on discovering and developing new tools to fight the diseases that cause millions of deaths each year in developing countries.

“It’s shocking how little research is directed toward the diseases of the world’s poorest countries,” says Bill Gates, co-founder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. “By harnessing the world’s capacity for scientific innovation, I believe we can transform health in the developing world and save millions of lives.”

Each of the 43 projects seeks to tackle one of 14 major scientific challenges that, if solved, could lead to important advances in preventing, treating, and curing diseases of the developing world.

“The Grand Challenges projects are very ambitious, and the researchers are taking important risks that others have shied away from,” says Dr. Elias Zerhouni, director of the National Institutes of Health and a member of the Grand Challenges scientific board. “Many of these research projects will succeed, leading to breakthroughs with the potential to transform health in the world’s poorest countries.”

The project teams have developed global access plans to help ensure that their discoveries can lead to new vaccines, staple crops, medical procedures, and other tools that are practical for use in developing countries and accessible for those who need them most.

“Scientific advances are of little value unless they are accessible to the people who need them,” says Dr. Richard Klausner, executive director of the Global Health Program at the Gates Foundation and a member of the Grand Challenges scientific board. “Grand Challenges researchers will pursue affordable and practical health solutions that have access built in from the very start.”

Courtesy of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. For more information: Grand Challenges in Global Health, www.grandchallengesgh.org or the Gates Foundation, www.gatesfoundation.org.

June 28, 2005

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